Writing to connect with the texture of our minds

Natalie Goldberg hits the mark again

When I started this sequence of daily posts, one of the things I hoped to uncover was a clearer sense of myself. This may be a longer process than I anticipated.

Since I found my copy of Natalie Goldberg’s Long Quiet Highway in a box in the attic, I have been reading it slowly to savour her prose and her thoughts about writing and spirituality. In a paragraph that is remarkably in tune with what I wrote above, she writes, on page 71 of the book:

Writing is a way to connect with our own minds, to discover what we really think, see, and feel, rather than what we think we should think, seem and feel. When we write we begin to taste the texture of our own mind.

I love that use of the word ‘texture’. And I think that also conveys the sense that there is a gradual unfolding and revealing of levels of understanding.

What also rings true is how she ends the paragraph I quoted. She writes: “This can often be frightening.”